It's not often that one sees a setting written for Anime d20, especially given the discussions cropping up regarding Guardians of Order's status as a company as of the writing of this review. So, it was a pleasant surprise to see Arakos: the Eighth Age made available, even more so considering that it comes from the author and artist duo who brought us Livin' on a Dream for Heartquest. So how does Arakos stack up?

Overall, it's not bad. The writing's good, and so is the layout for the most part (though the font used for titles and headers could've been a little better). The character artwork's good as well, fitting the anime fantasy style well, even if it is dominated by female characters. Editing is also good for the most part, though a few errors have slipped through (?King NAME?, anyone?).

Mechanics-wise, we're given eight races, along with five classes (though one of them is Anime d20's Adventurer class, reprinted to keep it handy). The races include a few tribes of humans, along with a race descended from alien refugees long ago, another offshoot of that race, the almost-requisite cat-people race, and a race descended from giants. Aside from the Adventurer class, the other classes presented are variations of standard fantasy classes.

It also provides some guidelines as to which attributes, defects, skills, and feats to use and not to use in an Arakos campaign, along with providing new ones associated with the setting. Perhaps the most interesting of the new attributes would be the Ki Guardian, which not only provides a protector for the character who has it, but also gives a background hook for that character in that it requires that someone in that character's life engage in ritual self-sacrifice in order to become one.

There's also a comprehensive section of magic specific to Arakos, divided into four schools of magic for Spirited Sorceresses (one of the classes in the book), along with both light and dark divine spells for the Pure Priestesses (one of the other classes). With all the spell lists, this section easily takes up nearly a third of the book.

The last portion of the book is for the setting itself, and this is where it disappoints. Simply put, the information given on Arakos itself as a world is a bit bare-bones and could've used some fleshing out. Information is given only for a few important locations and only one important NPC (Naomi the Pure, and no stats are given on her, just her backstory). Furthermore, with all the player races available, it's surprising that there aren't any creatures unique to Arakos listed, just some templates to use to convert creatures over to the dark side. It also gives some information on a few artifacts, but no game stats, either.

All in all, this is a book that had a lot of potential, and is still good for what it gives the reader. However, it could've used some beefing-up in terms of the setting. This is even more disappointing given the work that the author has done with just one city in his previous work, Livin' on a Dream. Still, it's not a bad buy, and if you're willing to do some extra work to create more NPCs as well as various creatures for the setting, it's worth a look.

LIKED: Nice artwork, some new races, classes, and various attributes, feats, and skills for the setting.

DISLIKED: The world could've used more development, as well as more NPCs (along with stats on them) and more info on artifacts.

LUFTWAFFE: 1946 Role Playing Game
Jonathan M. Thompson and Michael Scott
Battlefield Press, Inc., April 2004 (First Printing)
Downloaded from DRIVETHRURPG.com January 2006

Luftwaffe: 1946 is a role-playing game based on the Antarctic Press comic book series of the same name. I had a slight familiarity with the comic book series so when I say this game I purchased the e-book version. I wish I hadnâ€™t.

Luftwaffe: 1946 RPG uses Gold Rush Games ACTION! SYSTEM as its core mechanic. This is both the advantage and disadvantage of this game. It appears that the authors wrapped the ACTION! SYSTEM with the Luftwaffe: 1946 background material. Unfortunately, it appears they didnâ€™t translate enough. For instance, combat uses 5ft, 50ft, and 250ft scales. However, the distances in the Combat Modifiers Table (pg 66) are all in meters. Other times it is an inconsistency with naming conventions. For instance, in Chapter 7: Vehicles under Vehicle Speed, paragraph Initiative, the rule states: â€œ An alternative is to roll initiative for each vehicle, using the vehicles initiative modifier." Yet in the Table: Sample Vehicles (pg 88) as well as A List of Typical Luftwaffe 1946 Aircraft (pg 90) there is no â€œInitiative Modifierâ€ listed, just a Maneuverability Bonus (MB). Is this the same, or not? It is issues like this that render the system near unusable.

One would imagine that in the world of Luftwaffe: 1946 that aerial combat would be key. Air combat rules are here but they are very simplified. If you are looking for an air combat game to add to your role-playing this is NOT the system. You are probably better off finding a simple set of miniatures rules and figuring out how to fit them in yourself. The game includes stats for only 17 aircraft (none with pictures). The least the authors could of done was gone to the Luft â€™46 website (http://www.luft46.com/) or even used the Antarctic Press Luftwaffe: 1946 Technical Manuals for more illustrations. Furthermore, to an old grognard like me, the only real difference between aircraft is the Maneuverability Bonus. They range from +5 for an A6M5 â€œZeroâ€ to a â€“3 for large bombers like the B-35A Flying Wing. This extreme simplification is too much for me. I imagined a robust air combat system in a game where air combat is so important to the storyline and plot. Itâ€™s not here.

Finally, there is a touchy political issue here that offended me. In the introduction, Ted Nomura (author of the Luftwaffe: 1946 comic book series) gets his say. He discusses the early influences on his art and his quest for accuracy and details in models and eventually drawing. Near the end of his introduction though, he makes some statements that I have trouble just letting go. From page 7:
â€œBeing educated in America and thus thinking that weâ€™re a free-press society, I found the obvious censorship of history highly insulting to my intelligence. Thus, beginning in the early 1970s, I made a careful study of Nazi Germany and found out that their atrocities were not much worse than what other major countries had done to their people and their neighbors throughout the centuries of warfare. Focusing on a selected few seemed not only unfair but inaccurate. Telling only half-truths was just as bad as telling half-lies.â€

If you can put the politics aside, then this game may be for you. If you are focused on the RPG aspect and very familiar with the ACTION! SYSTEM them you may be able to use these rules. If you are looking for an air combat game to use in your RPG world, STAY AWAY.

A final note: Apparently there is a newer version of this game out there that has 160 pages versus the 109 in my version. Not having seen this later version I cannot comment further on it.

I hate to write a review about a product that I got for free during a period that it was offered here, but I feel compeled. First off, I would have been HIGHLY dissappointed in this product if I had paid for it. Out of 209 pages, I would estimate that 75-80% of this is rules oriented. Rules, which if I remember right, can be downloaded for free to begin with. I could be wrong about that. I was lead to belive that this product was as much a resource as a RPG. That is NOT the case. The forward claims that this is a game that would be light on combat, but heavy on roleplay. I dont see that from the content. VERY little as far as setting. There are some short write-ups on history, but I would find it more useful if there were more details about the "here & now" of Grantville. As it is, you would be better served to glean info from the books & the 1632 weebsites, then adapt it to whatever game system you feel comfortable with, because this product will not fulfill any of those needs. The introductory adventure in the back is, I hate to use the term, ludicris. It is a town & a premise. It is NOT an adventure. It has potential, but is LACKING in execution. Too bad, as a huge fan of the 1632 books, I had such high hopes for this product. To tell the truth, I was going to convert it to d20 Moder, or d20, anyway.

A very nice looking RPG set in an alternate universe. I never heard of the product before but found the description of the game intruiging and thought I'd give it a try. Very reasonably priced and had no trouble getting it downloaded from site.

LIKED: It sounds like a fun RPG with some elements that aren't too common, like having a fleshed out character flying a 1940's era combat aircraft

Open Core takes all the best and juciest bits of OGC and brings them together, actually successfully melds them seamlessly, and writes an entirely new rules mechanic around them that makes the whole thing work extremely well. It isn't D20. It is, in fact, the newest Linux system upgrade for D20 - all the best things of what's come out so far wrapped into one package that looks somewhat different from the original but is far superior and retains all the best aspects.

Before I go into all the things I liked about it, I will mention all the things I didn't like about it. First of all, I have sundry personal style issues with the game (for instance, I would work the Ability of Special Attacks differently). Most of the issues I have of personal style I will omit, save to say that I am less "rules light" than most people.

There are also numerous sometimes-confusing editing mistakes (such as the CP to Skill points conversion: first of all, it's 1:5, not 5:1, and secondly is it 1:5 or 1:10? ...I'm pretty sure it's 1:5). This also includes a number of copy/paste errors (references to Saves, or to traits that are not part of the main Open Core system).

Now, on to the likeable parts, which is most of it. The system is modular; adding and taking away parts are easy. There are even descriptions of ways to add new traits, a genericized Skill list, and descirptions of how "everyman skills" should work (my term, not theirs). Feats and Special Attacks/Qualities are all brought together into one heading, Abilities (pulled from BESM D20 Attributes). There is also a long list of optional elements that can be added, just to show a few examples.

If you're particularly prolific in purchasing OGC material, you will recognize half of what you see. While sometimes a bit startling, I do not find this to be a fault. This system is not designed to be innovative - it's designed to be the best of what has worked in the past. In this, it is a good purchase, well worth the money, and better than many other "alternate D20" or "alternative to D20" games on the market now.

Having purchased on other product from Battlefield Press (Luftwaffe 1946) which was less than impressive, I must say that it was with some trepidation that I purchased this ... and only really did so because I really really really like Larry Flint's books.

First the good things. BP have taken comments about L46 to heart, and there is considerably more *original* material in this product (since the ACTION! System is, essentially, free, any pages devoted to it are, essentially, wasted from the "value for money" point of view).

Even so, only 78 pages are *new* material ... the remaining 131 include the cover, the ACTION! System rules and graphics that are not game specific and which, indeed, seem to be mostly clip art used randomly for no better reason than to fill up space.

The sections on the 1632 background and on the world of the 30 years war are reasonably well done, but, considering that less than half of the book is actually *new* material, it would have been nicer if the authors had provided much more information on these areas.

The character sketches for the main characters for the book, in A!S terms are also well done.

Now for the bad news. The layout is terrible. As much as I was scathing about the lack of original material in L46, *that* product was much more professionally done.

This isn't going to make the product unusable ... so if poor layout doesn't worry you, read no further.

The layout is full of widows and orphans, needlessly so ... why? For the simple reason that the illustrations used to randomly pepper the pages (and it seems, for the most part, random) are so poorly placed and sized as to make this inevitable. Tables are similarly poorly placed and sized.

There is no rhyme or reason to picture size ... some are a column width, some less than a column width, some a column and a fraction. All could have been standard sized. Tables are also randomly sized, even when single column or double column sizing would have been easier (and more sightly!) to use.

Several text/other boxes are skewed, set at a slight but noticeable angle off 90 degrees, which is probably meant to look cool. However, for example, on page #23 this actually *causes* a worse orphan than the poorly considered layout already does! And the few other examples, more often than not, simply look *ugly*.

The art. That?s a subject all by itself. There are some good, obviously purpose drawn for the book pieces ... many of which are used again ... and again ... and again ... and again ... four or five times in some cases. Says a lot about why the layout sucks, doesn't it?

A lot of the rest is clip-art, or seems to be, and it is used badly. A lot of it seems to be used for no better reason than to fill up space and boost the page count. Which, of course, would be another reason why the purpose drawn for the book pieces are used multiple times.

And even there, there?s the map of Grantville and the circle of territory around it. Instead of a single page or, indeed, a double page, layout for it ... or even a single large sheet insert ... it?s split into quarters over four pages. In the middle of the book. And no, not in colour, and with nothing much in the way of detail that would justify the use of four pages. Or even two, for that matter.

Can anyone say ?padding??

None of this makes the product unplayable ... simply poorly laid out.

LIKED: The ACTION! System is a pretty good set of OGL rules, and 1632 uses them. The background chapters for the 30 years war period are fairly good, as is the information specific to the 1632 books. Would be nice if there was more of it, though, considering more than half of the book consists of information that is OGL and, therefore, free.

Open Core contains a variety of interesting concepts, but it falls short in execution. There are inconstancies in the rules and the grammar gets in the way of clarity in some places. Although these issues can be resolved (probably) through some careful application of thought, they impose an unnecessary burden on the reader and provide fertile ground for rules lawyers. There are two copies of the Campaign Power Level chart which are in disagreement. The example of character creation uses a ?campaign level? that is not in either of the charts. Some charts are poorly labeled (the skill purchase chart in the character creation example isn?t labeled at all). Numbers in examples do not always add up the way the rules would imply, though there is at least one case where the example is correct (what the designer apparently intended) and the rules themselves were misprinted. Many parts of the rules appear to have been written by somebody that has been deeply immersed in the system and is presuming the reader to be just as intimately familiar with the system. This set of rules is an excellent ?work in progress? that shows great promise and inventive thinking; however, it is in need of stern editorship and proofreading. I really want to like this product and sincerely hope that a revised edition is in the works.

LIKED: The general concept is excellent. It could make a wonderful generic platform.

I find the Open Core RPG to be an excellent alternative to the similar Action! system. Where Open Core really shines is in its treatment of superpowers, magic, and psionics- areas where Action! was deficient. If you want a good, comprehensive, generic RPG, you could do a lot worse than choosing Open Core.

LIKED: Its flexibility and completeness.

DISLIKED: I would have liked to see special abilties divided up between super and mundane, rather than putting them in the same section.

I think this a great addition to Action! rules. The layout was good, and if you play Action! games, then Beyond Mortal Men will be able to take your games to a new level of play.

My only dissapointment is that I guess I missed the verbiage about the book utilizing open source advantages/abilities from BESM. Not that this is bad, the advantages/abilities work well. I already had most of the books that these appear in. I am happy that this book puts it all into one place, and with the nice layout, is an attractive edition to when we play Action! games.

LIKED: Adds new dimensions to Action!

DISLIKED: Not much new material added to the open game content - however the product is very usable, and worthwile for any Action! game.